Internet users in the UK made 2.2 billion visits to search engines in February this year, an increase of 174 million on February 2011, according to new figures released by Experian Hitwise.

December, 2011, was the busiest month ever for search engines in the UK, according to Experian Hitwise, but it won't be long before that record is broken going by 2012 figures.

Google continues to be the most-used search engine, over 90% of searches in the UK are made on the search engine. In February, 2012, Google accounted for a whopping 91.57% of search traffic up nearly 1% on the previous month.

Yahoo was found to send the most clicks to a transactional website (35.5%), followed by Bing (34.9%) and Google (32.8%).

• The most searched for term in the UK is 'Facebook'
• 1 in every 5 searches ends up on a retail website
• 28% of search queries are just 2 keywords long.

"There was a continuing growth trend in visits to search engines in February 2012, as people relied on search to navigate their way around the Internet," said James Murray, Market Research Analyst at Experian Hitwise.

"Understanding how people are interacting with search engines, which keywords they are using and how successful those searches are, is becoming more critical than ever for companies to successfully market their brand online."